ondavsoraWhich spelling fits?

Quick tell: onda is a noun, ora is an adverb, so they fill different roles in a sentence.

Which to use

“onda” is a noun and “ora” is an adverb - they look or sound alike but fill different roles in a sentence.

#2,059
“onda” frequency rank
#2,489
“ora” frequency rank
4548
confusion score

Side-by-Side Comparison

Feature onda ora
Definition elevação e depressão da camada superficial de uma massa líquida; vaga agora

Letter map: onda vs ora

Shared letters muted; letters that set onda and ora apart highlighted. Shared run: 2.

4 ch
onda
3 ch
ora

Role in the sentence - onda and ora

Our dataset has no pronunciation recorded for both members, so the reliable separator here is grammatical: onda is anoun and oraanadverb. On the page they differ by 1 letter(s) in length. Our composite confusion score for this pair is 4548, derived from the frequency rank of both members and their visual similarity.

onda is recorded at frequency rank #2,059, classified as anoun, pronounced /ˈõ.dɐ/. ora is at rank #2,489, tagged as anadv.

Glosses for this pair are partially populated in our dataset, but the full side-by-side definitions above should still guide you to the right choice.

With a confusion score of 4548, this pair ranks #70,328 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs - a relatively easy-to-tell-apart pair.

Orthographic DNA of onda vs ora

Shared letters: ao. Private to "onda": dn. Private to "ora": r.

"onda" · 4 letters · shape VCCV  ·  "ora" · 3 letters · shape VCV

Known mistypes of this pair

  • ondanoda · odna · onad · ondda · onnda

Frequently Asked Questions

Do "onda" and "ora" mean the same thing in a sentence?
No - they are not even the same part of speech. "onda" is a noun and "ora" an adverb, so a sentence built for one is usually ungrammatical with the other.
In ordinary Portuguese text, does "onda" or "ora" show up more?
"onda" is the more common of the two: it sits at frequency rank #2,059 in our Portuguese list, against #2,489 for "ora". The two are close in frequency, so neither is a safe default; check the meaning rather than guessing.

Useful next steps

You've compared "onda" and "ora". Here's where to go from here.

  • Full dictionary entry for "onda" with definition, IPA, and generated misspellings. Word entry
  • Full dictionary entry for "ora" - compare definitions side by side with the headword page. Word entry
  • This pair ranks #70,328 of 75,631 scored Portuguese confusable pairs in this corpus vintage. Corpus statistics
  • "onda" and "ora" also get mixed up with nearby pairs, the highest-scored neighbour is "oni vs ora". Nearby pair
  • Recorded mistypes exist for at least one side of this pair, useful when a spell-checker or OCR lands on the wrong form. See mistypes

Confusion rank #70,328 of 75,631 scored Portuguese pairs, corpus vintage 2026-09-03, not spelling advice.

Source: Wiktionary (via kaikki.org) Structured Wiktionary extract

Source: FrequencyWords open word-frequency list